“The show’s been going amazing,” she told me over the phone last Friday, a few days before Bill and Hillary Clinton took in the production with their grandkids on coincidentally enough, Presidents’ Day. “The crowds and the energy from everyone at The Theater at Madison Square Garden have been awesome.”

Budinick, who hails from Brick, served as the show’s dance captain. It ran from February 9-19 inside the Theater at MSG.
“It was a brand new show,” she said. “I love starting everything from scratch and being a part of that process.

“To come back here to New York City and be able to perform for all of my family and friends and everybody else here who is coming to see the show is something I can’t even describe. I get choked up when I start talking about it because that’s something that you dream of as a kid.”

If there was any downside to it all, it might have been the amount of ticket requests Budinick received, but she handled that with a little assistance from her colleagues.
“I had to ask some friends to help me along the way and lend me some of their tickets as well so that I could accommodate everybody to come,” she revealed. “Everybody loves the show, because there’s so much dancing and there are so many interactive moments.”

She mentioned that at some points of the show, characters even come in to the audience. Thankfully, I’m guessing that if Big Bird and Elmo hadn’t passed Secret Service clearance, we would’ve heard about it by now.